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Date:      Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:46:23 +0200
From:      Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>
To:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Enormous utmp since mpsafetty
Message-ID:  <20080827114623.GA52927@keltia.freenix.fr>
In-Reply-To: <20080827132141.593e728d@peedub.jennejohn.org>
References:  <20080826124335.GD3305@carrot.paeps.cx> <48B416E7.70905@163.com> <20080827091255.GH3305@carrot.paeps.cx> <20080827132141.593e728d@peedub.jennejohn.org>

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According to Gary Jennejohn:
> There are many more pseudo-ttys in /etc/ttys now.  AFAIK utmp allocates
> an entry for every one of them at startup.

utmp concepts are ancient.  It is indexed by the tty/pty number so can grow
rather large but it should be a sparse one too.  I remember talks about
replacing it with something a bit more modern.  Backward compatibility is
assured through login(3) although it would break programs digging in the
utmp file itself.  SVR4 had utmp/utmpx and setutline/getutline BTW...

cf. sessreg(1)

       System  V has a better interface to utmp than BSD; it dynamically allo-
       cates entries in the file, instead of writing them at  fixed positions
       indexed by position in /etc/ttys.

-- 
Ollivier ROBERT -=- FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! -=- roberto@keltia.freenix.fr
Darwin sidhe.keltia.net Version 9.2.0: Tue Feb  5 16:13:22 PST 2008; i386




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